Comfortably Numb
by The Magical Illusion
Summary: Grief is a destructive force that can tear a person apart. Teetering on a fine line between fantasy and reality, between that fake smile everyone thinks is real and falling apart." What if? AU.


**Comfortably Numb**

**Disclaimer: **_I do not own any of these characters or have anything to do with Home and Away, if I did I would be rich and wouldn't be writing fanfiction._

**Chapter:**_ Prologue ?_

**Warnings:**_ Violence._

**Intro:** _A what if? of the siege / Olympic Cliffhanger. Don't really want to give too much away just yet._

**Prologue**

Death affects us all in different ways. To some people, it will come hard and fast, hitting them head on; instantaneously shattering any illusions of normality. To these people, perhaps, once they've cried their lifetimes worth and tears and been broken almost to the point of never being fixed, perhaps it will be easier. The grief, however horrible, will at least be brief at its heaviest and allowed to mellow over time. At least they can get back on with being 'the living'.

Others will take their pain out on someone else; wanting anyone, anyone at all to understand, to hurt like they are. They lash out, violent, angry. Strategies to mask the despair just beneath the surface. Some may, with help, learn to let people in again, to let themselves be loved. And others… others will need revenge.

Then there are those of us who take time to recover. They hide away; lock themselves tightly in a vault of despair. The quiet ones, the ones always insisting they're fine. Their agony prolonged. Grief is a destructive force that can tear a person apart. Teetering on a fine line between fantasy – dreams of what could've been - and reality, between that fake smile everyone thinks is real and falling apart. Eventually though, some may find a way to live with their loss, and in time – if they're lucky – allow that smile to become true.

And then there are those who don't cry – at least, not any tears the rest of us are aware of. Some might think it weak to give in to their grief, others just numbed by the pain – artificially or otherwise. Unable to grieve, unable to feel anything at all. Terrified that if they do, they might never get over it. Forever fighting silent tears alone at night, walls raised to protect them. As if somehow, it, this grieving, would be admitting the unthinkable reality. So they keep their loved ones with them forever by their side, unable to let go.

Grief caries no rules, but sometimes, the only conceivable way to live through death, is to move on. Not to forget the loved one – never – a memory is an etching of life that can never be smoothed over. But to push them to the back of your mind, that sacred place for stored thoughts, always there – just on _your_ terms. We must leave them in memories, not the here and now, not with the living.

We want so much to avoid it, this moving on, that when faced with the prospect of death a person may do impossible things. Adrenaline heightens senses more than any synthetic drug, inducing the feeling of being more alive than ever before. Every sight, every touch, every sound something to treasure, to cherish. There are exceptions, of course.

The silence that had suspended itself over one room in one particularly unfortunate little seaside town an example of this. The stillness wasn't being cherished. It was painful, like shards to the ears of the assembled group. Each individual breath contemplated, calculated, feared. The deafening silence only sometimes sliced with muffled sobs and secret whisperings, the jagged and agitated voice of the young woman stood in front of them or the crack of the gun on whatever surface she decided to introduce it to next. Or the feint ticking of the small ornamental clock on the mantelpiece. Time trickling away, moments never to be lived again, except in retrospect. And retrospect can be cruel.

As Sarah tilted the gun towards the group once again – a finger stroking the trigger, a harshly exhaled breath freezing the room – the couples (the victims) made their hold on each other tighter. As if through this, they would somehow be able to stop a bullet tearing through each others flesh, just by that simple touch of reality.

Sarah cocked her head to the side, looking pointedly at Kane, for no reason other than that was what she wanted to do at that particular moment. She jabbed the gun forwards a little, feeling a small bolt of something – which if it wasn't for recent events, and she still had something to live for (anything at all), she would call happiness – inside her, as Kane was unable to stop his reflexes from jolting him backwards further into his wife. He felt her perfectly smooth, un-worked hands wrap firmly around his lower arm and felt her tears soak through his t-shirt as she pressed her head into his back.

"All I want," Sarah steeled herself for speech, "…is for the person who killed Felix to step forward. No one else has to get hurt… Just one word." Pleas from a heartbroken young woman, a very confused and drug fuelled young woman, convinced that only one thing could make her boyfriend's death something meaningful. Revenge. She would kill his killer and avenge his death… an eye for an eye… a life for a life. Then, and only then, would she be able to do something for herself. Not to move on and make a new life. But to die. To be with Felix.

She didn't want to hurt anyone else; it wouldn't be fair, it wouldn't be right. Contrary to the popular belief in the town, she wasn't a cold-blooded killer. She didn't take pleasure out of beating someone's head to pieces with a crow bar. She didn't sit up at night dreaming of new and elaborate ploys to trap young boys and destroy them slowly. She wasn't, despite everything else that she was, a murdered.

Towards the back of the room, Noah leant down to whisper into his new wife's ear, moving his arms more strongly around her trembling body and bringing her closed to his. "I'm going to step forward." She dragged in her next breath with a shocked and despairing urgency. Tilting her head up towards him to look into his eyes, she immediately pleaded with him not to – and as the pad of his thumb gently tried to sooth the side of her face, he conceded with her.

The counsellor in Noah though – the protector, knew deep down, however harsh a truth, that Sarah wouldn't stop until she had her justice; until one of his friends, or his wife, or himself, was dead. He also knew, that if he let that happen he would never be able to live with himself.

He kissed Hayley softly again, reciprocating her sobbed whispers that she loved him – more than loved him. The amount of times they had said those three most important words to each other in just that past half an hour seemed like more than they'd ever said before. But now, with each of them staring possible death in the face. Loss. No number of 'I love you's were enough; no words able to show the other the true depth of their feelings.

Noah struggled to hold back the tears as Sarah announced that they had just five minutes left. Left? Left of what? …Left of life? Sarah angled her gun back towards an unusually shaken Flynn. Sally reached forward to her husband desperately, only to be held back by Jesse – he himself ready to act, to do anything to protect his friends – the only true family he had. Flynn shied away from the pistol, defeated. Reasoning with Sarah had failed, and forcing the truth on her, that _she_ actually killed Felix, had proved just as fruitless. Without his medical and counsellor training to dig him out of the situation, Flynn was finally beginning to realise that the night could only have one possible outcome, one much too horrifying to even contemplate.

Across the room, Noah had realised the same thing. If no one did anything to stop it, if _he_ didn't do something, and he lost Hayley… he'd rather die himself than that. As the moment of realisation hit home, he knew that was a huge probability. His conscience couldn't and wouldn't let her hurt his friends.

"Please don't make me do this," Sarah's voice cracked through the silence again, a whimper almost, begging. The sweat on her forehead had rolled into beads, perfect spheres held together seamlessly, foreign on the young woman's body. She ran a hand roughly through her rugged hair roughly and let out a small cry, insanity taking its stronger hold.

With the resumed silence, came the aftermath of the speech. It wasn't her words that scared them the most – it was her eyes. Those eyes that, regardless of the colour they usually were, had set in a firm and paralysed grey. If those eyes were the windows to her soul, then that certainly wasn't a place any of them wanted to consider.

Kane lifted his gaze from the floor to Sarah's face, hoping once again (vainly) to reason with her, to force her to understand. Looking into her eyes was a mistake. Like all shades of a colour, the grey in those eyes could be scratched away, faded. Revealing something much more frightening underneath. Anger and madness lurking perilously just below the surface, just below that top layer of blank that was keeping her hand from moving the gun to her own head, from squeezing those grey eyes closed and hearing the sound of a bullet rip into her skull; making her complete her mission. Dangerous emotions waiting to be unleashed beneath the nothingness. And then, if you were to look deep enough, maybe a little pain would be there; the unbearable agony of losing someone you loved. But that pain was buried, it hurt too much to let it show. She acted on anger alone. It was this anger that prompted her to cut the time and announce 30 seconds; she couldn't bear to… _be_ for much longer. Immune to the cries and pleading of her hostages, she began the countdown.

Feeling the small weight of his wife shake against him, Noah mirrored the other men in the room. He kissed the top of her head tenderly, desperately, and pushed her behind him, his body in front of hers – a man-made shield. He would die for his wife, without question.

Hayley pressed he head into her husbands back, taking fistfuls of his t-shirt in her hands, holding on. Her mind begging her to drag him backwards, to free him from the claws of danger, but her body unable to comply with the command. This realised, she could do nothing but cry and hold onto the back of his shirt, knowing she might never see his cheeky grin or cute mock glare ever again.

"Fifteen."

Sarah wasn't aware of the other people in the room. To her, there _weren't _any people in the room. They were targets, things to be shot at… insignificant. She didn't notice Kirsty hugging her husbands back and the steely determination on Kane's face. She didn't notice Leah holding the unconscious Peter to her, or Sally trying to reach Flynn – still held back by Jesse. Nor did she see Hayley crying and Noah move onto his knees, or Scott sit forward – his guilt finally thinning for a moment.

"Eight."

All she saw was Felix. Felix bleeding. Felix screaming at her to do it. To get it over with.

"Three." Her voice scattered across the room.

Hayley's hold on her husbands t-shirt was broken. He stood up. He shouted something Hayley didn't hear; her body too busy crumbling to the ground. Sarah pointed the gun at him. Hayley closed her eyes. She heard a shot fired and bodies crash to the carpeted floor. The sound ripped through her with such a painful sensation that she had never felt before.

She looked up though, to see Noah still standing, and Kane on top of Sarah on the floor.

Sally mirrored Kirsty's screams as the other men leapt onto Sarah and tried to overpower her. In the confusion that followed, Hayley heard more shots fired and an aching screech from outside, she saw Sarah slip free and run out of the room, and Noah follow. The new, painful feeling returned, but this time, instead of being paralysed by fear, she moved.

Noah burst through the front door to find Sarah pointing the gun at Dani. On hearing him shout her name she turned, and swung her aim to him. He backed into the doorway slightly, trying to work through the grief of his own life ending in a matter of seconds in his head. He heard her finger pull a little on the trigger of the gun, teasing it, heard her jagged breathing. The moment that he looked into her eyes he felt something brush past his side, before he realised what it was he noticed the flicker of genius cross the grey in Sarah's eyes. She would make Felix's murderer feel her pain. Death was too kind.

He forced his gaze to the side and saw his wife standing slightly in front of him. His breath caught in his throat.

Not giving Noah any time to move, Sarah turned her weapon to his beloved wife.

Fired.

The bullet penetrated her skin with a… _punching_ sound. Her eyes widened a little, he'd never seen so much of the whites of her eyes – not even when she was scared at some horror flick they watched together, and she'd constantly tuck herself behind him and grip his shirt for comfort, as she had done earlier in the night. He hadn't been able to make the monsters go away then, either.

And then she fell. Crumbled to the paving tiles like a rag doll or a puppet severed violently and immaturely from its strings. Broken.

Dead.

If the shock hadn't already taken over Noah's body, he'd have seen Sarah smile. It would've reminded him vaguely of the clowns from the travelling circus that he was eternally petrified of when he was small, and also a little of his mother. He would've heard her laugh a little. Then speak…

"Hurts, doesn't it."

Then he would've seen her point the gun to her own head and pull the trigger. He would've seen her fall to the floor, not like a doll, not something cherished, more like one of the horror film monsters; a smashed and blooded pumpkin.

He fell to his knees beside his wife and cradled her head in his arms.

He didn't see Dani shriek and crumple to the ground; didn't see the now permanent scars etched into every line of her usually flawless face. Her best friend. Murdered. In front of her eyes.

He didn't see Flynn reach under his arm and feel for any sign of a pulse in her neck, a vain hope – in which blood no longer flowed. He didn't hear the older man put his hands to his head and whisper, "I'm sorry mate," into the folds of his shirt sleeves. He didn't feel Jesse's hand on his shoulder, nor hear him start to cry. Neither did he feel the bitter cold wind bite into his skin or the droplets of rain starting to pour from the abyss like sky; impossible to reach …then she'd have to stay with him.

He clung to his wife's lifeless body, fingers digging into her lightly tanned, lightly blood-speckled skin a little too hard. Aware of only her face – eyes closed now, still – and the gradually spreading patch of crimson seeping through her chest.

Holding her tight, feeling her being pulled away from him, torn from him, wrenched by something much stronger. Still he held on, his soul being sucked up with her into the vault of the bottomless sky.

Holding on.

Death affects us all in different ways. There are those that will lash out violently, revenge the only cure to their agony. Others who will crumble pitifully into the depths of despair, needing support and love to drag them back up. Then there are those who will find a way to live through their grief, let their loved ones live on in memories only; that can let go, however hard it may be.

And then, there are those… who cant.

**Authors note: So... you like? A bit pithy and fluffy in parts I know, but hey, what you gunna do about it? Oh, and please just... _ignore_ any inaccuracies in the siege - since I can't remember the details too well. Flames for this will be used to toast marshmallows. And on a good day, reviewers may be rewarded with chocolate cake.**


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